The present invention relates to vehicle shifter mechanisms, and in particular to an improvement for connecting a pawl member to a pawl actuator.
It is known to provide a vehicle transmission shifter mechanism having an elongated handle with a bore extending longitudinally of the handle, and to extend a rod through the bore for actuating a pawl from a hand grip on the handle, the pawl being engageable with a detent plate and being useful for locating the shifter mechanism in various gear shift positions. Various mechanisms have been designed to movably mount the pawl to the shifter mechanism and to operably connect the pawl to the rod. However, these known mechanisms and connections include multiple customized parts and/or a relatively complex subassembly which takes up an unnecessarily high amount of time to assemble, thus driving up the manufacturing costs of the vehicle shifter mechanisms. Still further, the known subassemblies involve multiple rotating and sliding members that require a high level of quality control and present the possibility of warranty problems.
Thus, a shifter mechanism including an improved pawl-to-actuator connection and arrangement is desired to solve the aforementioned problems.